Tag Archives: EFSF

Accounting, Greek Debt, and Realism (Part Three)

In a Vox blog post, Julian Schumacher and Beatrice Weder di Mauro offer meaningful Greek government debt statistics. They quote an ESM estimate according to which the 2012 restructuring of Greek debt owed to official lenders amounted to a 50% haircut (see this previous blog post). And they argue that the net present value of Greek government debt relative to GDP amounted to 93% (presumably in 2013 or 2014), in line with other estimates (see this previous blog post).

How Greece Benefitted from European Debt Relief

The 2014 Annual Report of the ESM contains a box on “How Greece Benefitted from European Debt Relief” (p. 29). The concluding paragraph states:

The measures correspond to substantial economic debt relief … Considering these maturity extensions and interest rate deferrals over the entire debt servicing profile from a net present value (NPV) perspective shows a reduction in the overall debt burden and reveals implicit savings. … Stretching out principal repayment schedules over such an extended period of time, along with interest payment deferral, imply that these payments account for substantially less in NPV terms when assessed from the Greek side taking into account the financial market perspective.

No explanation is given as to why the NPV perspective should only reveal “implicit” savings. Whether a Euro must be paid in ten years or in twenty does make a difference, and a rather substantial one at the relevant interest rates. A footnote attached to the last sentence of the above quote is rather obscure as well. It says:

It should be noted that this does not entail any financial loss or write-down from an EFSF perspective. The EFSF is fully repaid; Greece has to cover any financing costs related to the agreed interest rate deferral in line with the amendment of the Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement.

See the earlier post on how to correctly account for sovereign debt.